1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates, generally, to an apparatus and method for identifying, processing and sorting documents. More particularly, it relates to an apparatus and method which automatically identifies, processes and separates different document types of multiple business entities.
2. Description of the Related Art
Numerous devices and methods have been developed which attempt to overcome the labor costs and human error problems associated with manual document identification, separation and processing. For example, devices and methods such as those disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,097,517; 4,542,829; and 4,088,982 recognize numeric information, printed patterns, and characters, respectively for processing and sorting. Devices such as those disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,455,871; 5,390,259; 5,073,953; and 4,731,858 analyze document image data by segmentation. U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,394,487; 5,317,646; 5,235,653; 4,949,392; and 4,933,984 disclose devices and methods which analyze and identify documents using various forms of template recognition. Other devices and methods, such as those disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,628,008; 5,555,556; 5,555,362; 5,502,777; 5,323,473; 5,274,567; 4,523,330 and 4,428,077 disclose various means for identifying, sizing, processing and sorting documents. However, none of these prior art devices and methods are able to identify, process and sort multiple documents from a single business entity and/or multiple business entities in a mixed document environment.
Thus, what is needed then is an apparatus and method for processing and sorting documents including, but not limited to, multiple coupons, multiple checks, multiple cash-in tickets and multiple batch tickets of a single entity and/or of multiple entities.
In view of the prior art as a whole at the time the present invention was made, it was not obvious to those of ordinary skill in the pertinent art how the needed apparatus and method could be provided.